DisHonors Awards Held Thursday; Snow and Hero's Family Honored
--4/11/2008

the Steven P.J. Wood Senior Fellow and Vice President for Research and Publications

1.DisHonors Awards Held Thursday; Snow and Hero's Family Honored
Cal Thomas, Larry Kudlow, Mark Levin and Ann Coulter highlighted the MRC's "2008 DisHonors Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters" presented on Thursday night, April 10, before an audience of more than 1,000 people packed into the Independence Ballroom of the Grand Hyatt hotel in Washington, D.C. In place of the journalist who won each award, a conservative accepted it in jest. Those standing in for the winners: Kellyanne Conway, Ron Maxwell, Jim Gilchrist, Congressman Mike Pence and Congressman Tom Tancredo. Following the presentation of the DisHonors Awards videos in five categories, a look at some "funny clips" and the audience picking the "Quote of the Year" by their applause, MRC President Brent Bozell honored Tony Snow with the MRC's second annual "William F. Buckley Award for Media Excellence." The evening ended on a more somber note, with a video tribute to Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy, a SEAL who was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for selfless valor in combat in Afghanistan in 2005. MRC Trustee Boone Pickens came on stage afterward to present Murphy's father, Daniel, and brother, John, with a $1 million check for the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation.

2.Text of the 15 Nominated Videos Played for the Audience
A listing of the three finalist quotes, as selected by the panel of 16 judges, played in each of five award categories: "Dan Rather Memorial Award for the Stupidest Analysis," "I'm Not a Political Genius, But I Play One on TV Award," "Damn Those Conservatives Award," "Barack Obama Gives a Thrill Up My Leg Award," and the "How We Adore Clinton-Gore Award."

3.The 16 'DisHonors Awards' Judges Who Evaluated the Quotes
To select the winners of the MRC's "2008 Dishonors Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporting," a distinguished panel of 16 leading observers of the liberal media in action generously gave of their time to serve as our judges. They reviewed three to five quotes in each of five award categories.

4.Audience Awards the 'Quote of the Year' to Chris Matthews
Based on the loudest applause from the audience, MSNBC's Chris Matthews earned the "Quote of the Year" for his adoration of Bill Clinton: "There are times when he sounds like Jesus in the temple. I mean, amazing ability to transcend ethnicity -- race, we call it, it's really ethnicity -- in this country and, and speak to us all in this amazingly primordial way."

5.CBS Reporter: NewsBusters Prompted Story on Bosnia 'Sniper Fire'
Confirming the important role that the MRC's NewsBusters blog played in exposing Hillary Clinton's bogus "sniper fire" story, CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson told the Los Angeles Times's "Web Scout" blog that it was in fact the March 18 NewsBusters item which prompted her to debunk Clinton's claims in a March 24 report for the CBS Evening News. According to the April 8 posting by David Sarno, the Times' Internet culture and online entertainment writer: "CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson didn't realize she had a story on her hands until a colleague e-mailed her a link to 12-year-old footage of the Bosnia trip that she herself had reported on, which had been posted on newsbusters.com [actually, NewsBusters.org] several days earlier. 'I clicked on a link and was stunned to see it was the same trip,' Atkisson said in an interview."

Cal Thomas, Larry Kudlow, Mark Levin and Ann Coulter highlighted the MRC's "2008 DisHonors Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters" presented on Thursday night, April 10, before an audience of more than 1,000 people packed into the Independence Ballroom of the Grand Hyatt hotel in Washington, D.C.

Following the presentation of the DisHonors Awards videos in five categories (see text of quotes in #2 below with a link to the video clips), a look at some "funny clips" and the audience picking the "Quote of the Year" by their applause, MRC President Brent Bozell honored Tony Snow with the MRC's second annual "William F. Buckley Award for Media Excellence." Snow praised the late Buckley's selfless efforts to identify and encourage promising young conservatives and then Snow regretted the current political rancor as he urged the audience to appreciate America's greatness.

For video and audio of the Buckley award presentation and acceptance: www.mrc.org

The evening ended on a more somber note,
with a video tribute to Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy, a SEAL who was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for selfless valor in combat in Afghanistan in 2005. MRC Trustee Boone Pickens came on stage afterward to present Murphy's father, Daniel, and brother, John, with a $1 million check for the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation and then Daniel Murphy thanked Pickens and expressed gratitude for the 29 years he had with his son.

For video and audio of the tribute video, check presentation and remarks by Daniel Murphy: www.mrc.org

Cal Thomas, a syndicated columnist and panelist on FNC's Fox News Watch, served as Master of Ceremonies. Larry Kudlow, host of CNBC's Kudlow & Company, presented the first two awards, followed by columnist/commentator Ann Coulter who presented the third award before setting up a series of "funny clips." Talk show host Mark Levin handled the fourth and fifth awards.

In place of the journalist who won each award, a conservative accepted it in jest. Those standing in for the winners: Pollster Kellyanne Conway, Ron Maxwell, director of Gods and Generals, Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist, Congressman Mike Pence (R-Indiana) and Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado).

The evening began with welcoming remarks from Cal Thomas, an invocation by Father John De Celles and the Pledge of Allegiance led by Army Major Art Finch. # Video clips of the entire evening are online in click-and-play Flash format and as downloadable Windows Media files, as well as with MP3 audio clips, at: www.mrc.org/gala.asp

The MRC's new Eyeblast.tv video site also has Flash video clips on this channel dedicated to the awards and gala videos: www.eyeblast.tv

To render and post the video, members of the MRC's News Analysis Division (NAD) and IT department stayed up overnight. From NAD: Michelle Humphrey, Kristine Lawrence and Melissa Lopez. From IT: Eric Pairel and Brad Ash.

A listing of the three finalist quotes, as selected by the panel of 16 judges, played in each of five award categories: "Dan Rather Memorial Award for the Stupidest Analysis," "I'm Not a Political Genius, But I Play One on TV Award," "Damn Those Conservatives Award," "Barack Obama Gives a Thrill Up My Leg Award," and the "How We Adore Clinton-Gore Award."

Video clips of all the nominated video clips, as well as of the entire evening, are online in click-and-play Flash format and as downloadable Windows Media files, as well as with MP3 audio clips, at:
www.mrc.org/gala.asp

The MRC's new Eyeblast.tv video site also has Flash video clips on this channel dedicated to the awards and gala videos: www.eyeblast.tv

Below are the top runners-up in each award category as picked by the judges, followed by the winner and the name of the conservative who accepted the award in jest:

+ Dan Rather Memorial Award for the Stupidest Analysis

Presented by Larry Kudlow

Runners-up:

# "Do you worry at all that non-believers may feel excluded and diminished at a time when we're so divided about so much?" -- CBS's Katie Couric to The Nativity Story's Catherine Hardwicke and Mike Rich in a Dec. 4, 2006 Evening News story about Hollywood movies based on Biblical themes.

# MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "Russ Feingold wants to censure the President, the Vice President, other administration officials for the way in which they talked us into in Iraq. What do you make of it? Where do you stand on that kind of thing?"

Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore: "Good idea. I think, it's something though that, actually they should be lucky just to get censured. Personally, I'd like to see a perp walk coming out of the West Wing of the White House."

Matthews: "Do you think they're guilty of war crimes?"

Moore: "Absolutely." -- MSNBC's Hardball, July 23, 2007.

And the winner is:

# "As violence falls in Iraq, cemetery workers feel the pinch" -- Headline over an October 16, 2007 story by McClatchy News Service reporters Jay Price and Qasim Zein.

Accepting for McClatchy News...Kellyanne Conway

+ The I'm Not a Political Genius But I Play One on TV Award

Presented by Larry Kudlow

Runners-up:

# "Over the past six years we've had to add to the American picture: rendition, illegal wiretapping, voter suppression, no habeas corpus, the neglect of our great city New Orleans and the people, an attack on the Constitution and the loss of our best young men and women in a tragic war. And this is a song about things that shouldn't happen here, happening here. And so right now we plan to do something about it -- we plan to sing about it." -- Bruce Springsteen introducing his song "Living in the Future" before a concert on NBC's Today, Sept. 28, 2007.

# Rosie O'Donnell: "655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. Who are the terrorists?"

Elisabeth Hasselbeck: "Who are the terrorists?"

O'Donnell: "655 Iraqis. I'm saying you have to look from, we invaded-"

Hasselbeck: "Wait, who are you calling terrorists?"

O'Donnell: "I'm saying, if you were in Iraq, and another country, the United States, the richest in the world, invaded your country and killed 655,000 of your citizens, what would you call us?" -- Rosie O'Donnell on ABC's The View, May 17, 2007.

And the winner is:

# "I'm just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That's a fact." -- Host Bill Maher on his HBO show Real Time, March 2, 2007 discussing how a few commenters at a left-wing blog were upset that an attempt to kill Vice President Dick Cheney in Afghanistan had failed.

Accepting for Bill Maher...Ron Maxwell

+ Damn Those Conservatives Award

Presented by Ann Coulter

Runners-up:

# "This is going to result in racial profiling. If, in her America, in Michelle's America, when you look, 'Is that Hispanic guy an illegal or is he legal?' It reminds me so much of when they used to pull down the pants of Jews to see if they were circumcised or not. It is, it is so, so pathetic. It's so un-American....I want you to know, ladies and gentlemen, that what they are doing is using the police force of the United States to break up families and sow horror and pain." -- Geraldo Rivera rejecting columnist Michelle Malkin's argument that citizens should report illegal immigrants to the authorities, FNC's The O'Reilly Factor, June 8, 2007.

# Matt Lauer: "He [Rush Limbaugh] makes a living poking fun at Democrats, but now some think he has gone a little too far in taking on Senator Barack Obama...."

Okwu: "Which lead some to wonder, has Limbaugh been getting a free pass?..."

Paul Waldman, Media Matters: "This is basically the radio equivalent of a black-faced, minstrel show. You're going back to Amos and Andy and all of those, kind of, racist shows in the past."

Okwu: "For his part, Obama says he doesn't listen to Limbaugh but says being targeted is part of being a politician....

Song parody: "Don't vote the Magic Negro."

Okwu: "Legitimate political satire or something darker?" -- NBC's Today, May 21, 2007. Limbaugh's parody was inspired by a black writer who used the term in a March 19 Los Angeles Times op-ed, "Obama the Magic Negro."

And the winner is:

# "Everything you said about [withdrawing some troops from] Iraq yesterday, and everything you will say, is a deception, for the purpose of this one cynical, unacceptable, brutal goal: perpetuating this war indefinitely. War today, war tomorrow, war forever! And you are playing at it! Playing! A man with any self respect, having inadvertently revealed such an evil secret, would have already resigned and fled the country!...Mr. Bush, our presence in Iraq must end, even if it means your resignation, even if it means your impeachment....This country cannot run the risk of what you can still do to this country in the next 500 days." -- MSNBC Countdown anchor Keith Olbermann addressing President Bush in a "Special Comment," Sept. 4, 2007.

Accepting for Keith Olbermann...Jim Gilchrest

+ The Barack Obama Gives a Thrill Up My Leg Award

Presented by Mark Levin

Runners-up:

# "Today they gathered by the thousands at American University, sensing a moment of history. John F. Kennedy gave the commencement address here five months before he was shot. And today the audacity of hope had its rendezvous with destiny: The Kennedy clan anointed Barack Obama a son of Camelot." -- David Wright on ABC's World News, January 28, 2008.

# Senator Barack Obama: "Let's roll back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans, let's make certain that those resources go to the people who need it....We're not going to solve it by pretending that issues of poverty and struggle among working families are just going to go away magically because the stock market is going up."

Moderator Chris Matthews: "So much of what you say just grabs people like me, because it sounds like Bobby Kennedy." -- Exchange at AFSCME Democratic candidates forum shown live on MSNBC, June 19, 2007.

And the winner is:

# "He's come from a white family and a black family, and he's married to a black woman, and they're cool people. They are really cool. They are Jack and Jackie Kennedy when you see them together. They are cool. And they're great-looking, and they're cool and they're young, and they're -- everything seems to be great....He may not win this thing because everybody in America is not going to be in a room with him somewhere. And it doesn't quite -- it worked with you on TV but, I tell you, when you're in the room, it's just like one of those things like Hillary Clinton, if you're in the room you understand what a likable person she is. If you're in with Obama, you feel the spirit. Moving." -- MSNBC's Chris Matthews talking about Barack Obama on NBC's Tonight Show, January 16, 2008.

Accepting for Chris Matthews...Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN)

+ How We Adore Clinton-Gore Award

Presented by Mark Levin:

Runners-up:

# "There he [Bill Clinton] goes again. The man often called the most gifted politician of his generation is once again at the center of American politics, taking over the 2008 Democratic campaign. And he's clearly loving every minute of it....He lectures and jokes around and feels your pain and implores you to believe....It's so unprecedented, this personal and political partnership, so fraught with history and Baby Boomer melodrama. They have already made history, and they are out to do it again, together, through it all." -- ABC's Terry Moran after spending the day with Clinton for a report on Nightline, January 24, 2008.

# Cynthia McFadden: "Last week the campaign launched and effort to showcase those people -- friends, constituents, including many of them in a new Web site called 'The Hillary I Know.'"

Woman in video: "The Hillary that I know is a compassionate woman."

Man in video: "The Hillary I know saved my life."...

McFadden: "As I looked at it, it's terribly sweet in so many ways, and yet, it sort of has this Sally Field quality to it. You know, 'They like me, they really like me.' And I wonder if there's not a double standard? I don't see the guys doing it. Are you judged differently, do you think, on the personal level?" -- ABC's Cynthia McFadden interviewing Hillary Clinton on Nightline, December 19, 2007.

And the winner is:

# "When I watched him [former President Bill Clinton] at Mrs. King's funeral, I just have never seen anything like it....There are times when he sounds like Jesus in the temple. I mean, amazing ability to transcend ethnicity -- race, we call it, it's really ethnicity -- in this country and, and speak to us all in this amazingly primordial way." -- MSNBC's Chris Matthews, February 28, 2007 Hardball.

To select the winners of the MRC's "2008 Dishonors Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporting," a distinguished panel of 16 leading observers of the liberal media in action generously gave of their time to serve as our judges. They reviewed three to five quotes in each of five award categories. For each set of quotes the judges picked first and second place choices. First place selections earned two points, second choices were allocated one point. The MRC's Michelle Humphrey and Kristine Lawrence tabulated the ballots.

- Tony Blankley, Exec. Vice President of Global Public Affairs, Edelman; columnist for The Washington Times

Quote of the Year. Following the presentation of the awards, MRC President L. Brent Bozell came on stage where he was joined by Master of Ceremonies Cal Thomas, the three presenters (Larry Kudlow, Ann Coulter and Mark Levin) and the five acceptors (Kellyanne Conway, Ron Maxwell, Jim Gilchrist, Mike Pence and Tom Tancredo). Attendees saw replays of the four winning quotes from members of the news media: McClatchy News, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Chris Matthews.

Then, as a picture of each nominee was displayed, audience members were asked by Bozell to express their opinion on which quote deserved the Quote of the Year designation as the worst bias of 2007. The loudest applause was earned by MSNBC's Chris Matthews for this adoration of Bill Clinton, which won the "How We Adore Clinton-Gore Award," from the February 28, 2007 Hardball: "When I watched him [former President Bill Clinton] at Mrs. King's funeral, I just have never seen anything like it....There are times when he sounds like Jesus in the temple. I mean, amazing ability to transcend ethnicity -- race, we call it, it's really ethnicity -- in this country and, and speak to us all in this amazingly primordial way."

The Quote of the Year selection, as posted on the MRC's Eyeblast.tv: www.eyeblast.tv

Confirming the important role that the MRC's NewsBusters blog played in exposing Hillary Clinton's bogus "sniper fire" story, CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson told the Los Angeles Times's "Web Scout" blog that it was in fact the March 18 NewsBusters item which prompted her to debunk Clinton's claims in a March 24 report for the CBS Evening News.

According to the April 8 posting by David Sarno, the Times' Internet culture and online entertainment writer: "CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson didn't realize she had a story on her hands until a colleague e-mailed her a link to 12-year-old footage of the Bosnia trip that she herself had reported on, which had been posted on newsbusters.com [actually, NewsBusters.org] several days earlier. 'I clicked on a link and was stunned to see it was the same trip,' Atkisson said in an interview."

The March 18 NewsBusters story, written by MRC Research Director Rich Noyes, included about 30 seconds of Attkisson's story from the March 25, 1996 edition of CBS This Morning. The video showed Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea smiling, walking calmly and greeting children as they arrived in Tuzla, Bosnia -- not running to dodge sniper fire, as the Democratic presidential candidate claimed in a March 17 speech. For that NewsBuster item: newsbusters.org

Attkisson posted additional video of her trip, including a photo of her chatting on a military plane with the then-First Lady, on CBS's "Couric & Co." blog on March 24, six days after the video from NewsBusters began circulating around the Internet: www.cbsnews.com

Attkisson's subsequent story on the Evening News effectively showed how Clinton's new version of her Bosnia story could not be true. For a transcript of the Monday, March 24 Evening News story, scroll down in this March 26 CyberAlert item: www.mrc.org

The news about NewsBusters came in a blog from Sarno posted Tuesday about the impact of YouTube on the U.S. presidential election. Here's an excerpt:

It's the hottest election in recent memory, and the first of the YouTube era, so no wonder political video is whizzing around faster than you can tape your cat mouthing "superdelegate." Bedroom producers, the campaigns themselves, and everyone in between is using online video to make a point, a profit, both, or neither.

Though videos like Jack Nicholson's popular pro-Hillary spot "Jack and Hill," made with help from Rob Reiner, can score big on YouTube, you don't need to be a celeb or an "SNL" writer to get noticed. Ben Relles put himself on the map when he and two partners brought the world "Obama Girl," the candidate's sultry, singing follower who rings in millions of page views every time she bobs onto the computer screen. ("I've got a crush on Obama," was nominated Monday for a Webby Award). Relles' fledgling BarelyPolitical.com was bought by the Web TV company Next New Networks last October and now has four full-time employees.

Steve Grove, YouTube's head of news and politics, said videos in that category had seen a "lurch forward" in popularity in the last year, and the last month has been no exception. A March 24 CBS News segment showing that Hillary Clinton had misremembered the details of her 1996 trip to Bosnia become YouTube's most viewed video that week, no small feat considering the site gets hundreds of thousands of new uploads every day. The week before that, those Fox News videos of Obama's fiery former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, accounted for five of the top 12 political videos on the site, and the Obama speech that that controversy engendered has been watched on YouTube over 4 million times -- the most ever for a video from a presidential campaign....

Speaking of the conversation between the Web and big media, CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson didn't realize she had a story on her hands until a colleague e-mailed her a link to 12-year-old footage of the Bosnia trip that she herself had reported on, which had been posted on newsbusters.com several days earlier. "I clicked on a link and was stunned to see it was the same trip," Attkisson said in an interview. Atkisson wasted no time. Her team dug up CBS' archived footage and had a segment questioning Clinton's account on the news that night.

This back and forth continued the next day, when the Web crowd took Attkisson's segment and ran with it. Various media outlets had noted the dubiousness of Clinton's account, but the CBS segment gave the story a shot of testosterone. The viral reaction was so great that in a follow-up report the next night, CBS even mentioned the YouTube clip of their own segment, noting it had scored over 1 million views and "spread all over the Internet."

Federal employees and military personnel can donate to the Media Research Center through the Combined Federal Campaign or CFC. To donate to the MRC, use CFC #12489. Visit the CFC website for more information about giving opportunities in your workplace.